Language and Culture in Unity

Compiled and Written by : Hi Fui Jong,
Lot 2250, Taman Bayshore, Jalan Pantai PIasau, Miri.
BBI3215: Introduction to Psycholinguistics

Assignment Task: Language and Culture in Unity

1. Introduction
When someone says the word language and culture, we automatically connect both the words together. It is an automatic instinct that we get as experienced humans to think that way.

- Is there any close relation between language and culture?
- Can we consider language and culture as things that always go hand in hand and always influence each others from time to time?
- Are language and culture in unity?

Before considering the relationship between language and culture, let’s
look into the meaning of this two term and let’s define the terms carefully.

2. What is language ?
The term language refers to the complex of universally human potentialities for vocal communication or, simply the gift of speech. It refer to any one of the thousand systems of communication used by different human societies to convey ideas and thoughts. Together with thought, language is often regards as a distinct abilitiy of human race which enable man to be more superior than other living things in this world.

However, from the psychological’s point of view, language is often regards
as a medium of human communications either in the form of speaking or writing, which enables man to encode and decode ideas , emosion and thoughts.
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In most of the Sociology text book it is often defined as “a system of symbols that allows members of a society to communicate with one another.”

3. What is culture ?
- According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, culture means :
i. the customs and beliefs , art, way of life, and social organaization of a particular country or group.
ii. the beliefs and attitudes about something that people in a particular group or organization share.

The term culture can also refers to the total pattern of human societies, and of human learned behavior transmitted from generation to generation. Cultures are able to transmit due to the presense of human language which enabled all the ideas and values to flourish for many
thousands years.


4 The relationship between language and culture
When one talks about culture, however the mention of language is unnecessary because any particular language is a form of learned behaviour and therefore a part of culture. Thus, both language and culture is interlinked; which is what the Sapir-Whorf hyphothesis state.

5. What is Sapir-Whorf ‘s view about language and culture’s relation?
As we all know, people perceive the world through the cultural lens of language . Similarly, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis also strongly believed that
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language was the isolating and organizing elements of experience and that the individual ‘s culture determines their language.

In this essay, it wiil be argued that the language plays an impaortant role in the construction of human’s culture, how it molds the culture in many different ways and how Sapir-Whorf hypothesis support such view. We are also going to see how language and culture seem to appear in the form of unity in nature.

6. The role of language in human’s thought and culture.
For human all around the world, language seems to be the major means of passing culture from generation to generation. Each language consists of many different symbols that carry out the unique cultural heritage. As Whorf believes that language with different structures conceptualized reality differently.

Expanding on sapir-Whorf’s hyphothesis, a double principle can be stated that the principle of linguistics determination, namely that the way one thinks is determined by language one speaks and the principle of linguistics diversity, that differences among languages must therefore be reflected in the differences in the world views of their speakers. For example, a person speaks Hindu will has a different stand on issue based on cloths than a person that speaks Italian.

The person that speak Italian will most likely believe that it is normal for a
16 year-old girl to be walking down a road wearing a short skirt and a tight ,
short, revealing top. The Hindu speaking person on the other hand will not
only disprove of it, but will feel ti is discriminations to their culture. This


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different in opinion is due to the language, that each person speaks which in turn shape our culture and the way we think and feel in different situations and scenarios. Language allows us to gain knowledge of the past centuries, and how the different culture were back then.

Consequently, language skills not only link us with the past, they set the human imagination free. Language is the way we learn our culture, without language we would not be able to share ideas and pass the culture to our children.
To summarize, it can be said that just as Sapir-Whorf states, people speaking different language perceive the world differently, which up bring the different cultures.

Humans are the only species in the entire world that can communicate the most effectively. Even though other living species (such as birds and ants) do communicate to a certain extent. It is not as well as the way a human communicates. Thus, language both written and spoken distinguishes human being as unique to other creatures since the other creatures do not communicate or interact with each others as well as human.
Language does not just function as a device for reporting experience but also as a way of defining experience which is what culture is about.

The main point of the culture is what you learn from others which is lacking in animals even they still seem to experience culture to some degree. Although animals and human share some properties, human language is based on entirely different principles. Human are not just
simply inteligent but posseses a specific type of communication. Human are unique in their ability to speak and write in language of their own

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which give human beings a culture of some type, where as animals don’t.

7. Language determines the cultural reality of people
Language is an expression of human activity meaning CULTURE, and as human ‘s activities is forever changing, language changes with it too. Language changes least rapidly when the person is isolated from other communities, and most rapidly when they find themselves, so as to speak at the crossroads of the world. Let’s take an example when a person (an Asian) migrates to other country, let’s say to Canada, he or she might experience some cultural shock first. Later on though after a few years or even months he will transform into a new society and get use with the new culture. Without realizing, he will start acting and dressing like Canadians because of the message that he gets from communicating with the people. Perhaps, what seem to be morally wrong like wearing sleeveless tops, short skirt etc will seem acceptable to him then.

The extent to how people change varies, but when people from different cultures come into contact, each will at least adopt a few words from the other language from cultural items or concepts. Thus, culture and social contact and human’s thoughts can influence the rate of linguistic change.
People who try to merge themselves into a new society that has a different language makes people perceive the world differently, just as the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis suggests. Therefore, it is evident that language determines the cultural reality of people.

Neveretheless, language also change as human beings do, but the changes are spread over periods of centuries, instead of years.

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For an example, looking in the mirror each morning there’s no noticeable change from the day before. Yet the time comes when we are not a child but a man then an elderly man. Just like this example language does too like individuals.
There are quite a number of languages that had extinct from the world, for instance, 56 of the oboriginal languages in Canada are dispappearing and why these long-lived language are disappearing is because many people in that particular area do not use it.
To many people, the lost of the language means a lost of the world heritage. The extinction of languages is a major threat to the world culture. If languages were to go extinct one by one, we would only be left with a limited amount of languages and in return a limited number of cultures. This posseses a great threat in that people will not be able to identify themselves in a unique way in the varies country they live in.
Language and culture are closely related, and they keep influencing each other from time to time.



8. Conclusion
From what we have discussed, it is evident that language is what that makes or moulds cultures. Human thoughts and every day activities are greatly influenced by languages. Since these two always go hand in hand and influence each others, thus, we may say that Laguage and culture unity is something that is reasonable, and it is a fact that is accepted by all.

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REFERENCES

1. Aitchison, Jean. 1998.
The articulate Mammal: An introduction to Psycholinguistics(Forth Edition) London :Routledge

2. Sharifah Zainab Syed Abd. Rahman (2001)
Introduction to Psycholingustics , a module for BBI 3215 UPM
Universiti Putra Malaysia.

3. R. A Hudson (1999),
Sociolinguistics,) second Edition, Cambridge University Press.

4. Steinberg, Danny D. 1993, An Intriduction to Psycholinguistics.
London Longman

5. Salzaman Zdenek,
Language, culture and society: An Intriduction to Linguistics Anthropology, Calorado: West view Press 1993




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CONTENT PAGE
1. Introduction 1

2. What is language ? 1

3. What is Culture ? 2

4. The relationship between language and culture 2

5. What is Sapir-Whorf ‘s view about language and culture’s
relation ? 2-3

6. The role of language in human’s thought and culture 3-4

7. Language determines the cultural reality of people 5-6

8. Conclusion 6

REFERENCES 7